Another fic for egeria61
The After Effect
Chapter Two
Disclaimer. Don't own them, blah blah blah, really wish I did, blah blah blah, also wouldn't mind making money from them but sadly I don't, blah blah blah, and I love BSG and feedback so feel free to give me either of those :D
Warnings. Nope, nothing too scary here and certainly no spoilers. This is AU.
This is the sequel to Chamalla and Ambrosia. You can find that fic on Survival Instinct here
or my LJ here. Now on with the sequel...
Chapter one is here.
Chapter Two.
It wasn’t necessarily an awkward silence they had fallen in to, but it was certainly a silence, a silence that had lasted for almost an hour now. He sat in his seat, slowly sipping tea, which had long since gone cold, she sat on the cool leather sofa, which had now warmed to her body temperature, mirroring him by occasionally lifting a thick, heavy glass to her lips and taking small soft sips of the tepid water within. The noodles had been forgotten, she didn’t mind, she couldn’t focus on the idea of food this morning and he hadn’t pushed her into it, not yet anyway.
It wasn’t the most uncomfortable silence they had ever experienced but their usual repartee had been forgotten, lost somewhere between the darkness of the previous night and the light of a new day. It wasn’t Galactica’s fault, sweeping harsh light over their silent forms, neither one blamed the ship, there were things that hung between them, topics of conversations neither were sure they were ready to face.
So they stayed silent.
Laura avoided the distinct urge to crawl back into bed. She avoided it by reminding herself that perhaps she shouldn’t have been there in the first place. In bed that is. She didn’t remind herself whose bed it was.
He glanced up, occasionally, to find her staring off into space. She was thinking. That didn’t always bode well for him, as past experience had proven. Thinking had taken her to Kobol, where he had no choice in the end but to follow her. Thinking had done a lot to all of them, her thinking, his thinking, other peoples thinking. For instance, he was thinking right now and with such intensity that he didn’t even blink when she looked up to find him staring directly at her. He wasn’t even looking at her, no, he was thinking, but then his eyes met hers and he was most definitely looking at her, right at her. It was with a soft mumble of surprise, some apology and excuse that he looked away. That had been his chance to speak and break the silence that hung over them for too long, he realised too late. She returned to sipping her water and he his tea.
Now it was an awkward silence.
*Say something, say something, say something, say something…* his mind kept demanding of him over and over again until he couldn’t take it any more *say something, say something, say something, say something, say…*
“Morewater?” His words escaped in one big rush of air and all too late he realised they had come as some what of a surprise to the President as she jumped, shocked at the sudden loss of their silence, the contents of her glass propelled upwards yet somehow managing to land back in the glass, at least partially. For the most part, trickles of water made their way down the sides of the glass, across her hand and down her arm, droplets having fallen like rain against her shirt and the surrounding sofa. The glass, tall as it was, had been surprisingly full considering that she had been slowly sipping the same contents for the last hour.
His expression displayed some of the embarrassment he felt within, but at the same time there was something else. Laura didn’t pick up on his expression, too busy trying to settle her glass on the table while shifting in her seat to assess how much water had escaped and what she could use to wipe it all up.
“No…I think I have all the water I need” She replied distractedly.
It took a while before she realised that he had fallen back into silence. When he didn’t say another word, she looked up, pulling her attention from the task of drying off the sofa, with her sleeve of all things. Funny, there seemed a lot less water when she’d deemed her sleeve would do the job, now it was soaked through and she couldn’t help but think that this glass was deceptive. Clearly there was an endless bottom to her glass from which water readily replenished itself.
It took her all of three seconds to determine why he hadn’t spoken again.
“Admiral” She used his formal title, “THIS is not funny!”
He was barely containing a burst of laughter at her expense. Being laughed at was not Laura Roslin’s thing. People saw the inside of an airlock for even considering it, but she had to admit, as his eyes twinkled and a rumble of laughter worked its way slowly up from the pit of his stomach and through his chest, filling his quarters with throaty amusement, this was rather funny.
“Shut up Bill!” She managed to get out with a reasonably serious tone as she hurried past him to find a cloth, only just managing to contain her own amusement within a repressed smile, which she failed to hold back for long, her eyes twinkling with laughter despite herself.
“Oh, you would find this funny” she continued as she returned with a cloth, where it came from didn’t concern him; he was too busy laughing at her expense.
“That’s right” She began wiping the sofa, intermittently waving the cloth in his direction to emphasis her words “You just let it all out” She huffed, having finished wiping up the water from the sofa and now attempting to dab the moister from the sleeve of her jacket “I would hate for you to do yourself an injury by failing to laugh your ass off at me getting wet!” If anything, his laughter got worse, the innuendo behind her words prompting a trigger in his mind, which tickled something in his brain and told him ‘yes, yes I would very much like to laugh at that right now’ and so he did.
And so Bill Adama laughed his ass off at Laura Roslin somehow managing to soak herself, and his sofa, with less than half a glass of water. Perhaps it was because they had remained in silence for so long that the breaking of that silence resulted in what could only be described as almost giddy, hysterical laughter. Whatever the cause, he welcomed it with open arms and the smile that lit his features, not merely his mouth but his eyes and his entire face, made her smile in spite of herself.
“Bill…” His voice rolled off her tongue as she rolled her eyes, slumping back onto the sofa and tossing the now saturated cloth aside. “What are we doing here?”
The laughter still hung over them, like a pleasant reminder, but the topic was serious and neither of them avoided it as they had hoped they would.
“Well Madam President” He sat further back in his seat, realising only now that he had been perched on the end of his seat the entire time “I believe that we’re laughing” And another rumble of gentle laughter escaped his lungs, at which Laura Roslin raised an amused eyebrow.
“Really Admiral?” He didn’t like that tone, she was thinking again “Because” It was getting worse, she sounded distinctly cheery “If I’m not mistaken, you appear to be the only one laughing” That…that was true. He was the only one laughing, but…he had good reason.
“Well Laura” He attempted to lighten the tone, remind her that he was, after all, her friend, her confidant and that whatever he was, he was friendly and certainly not in need of airlocking or anything else of the such. “That’s because I’m laughing at you” Well, that actually took a turn he hadn’t expected when he opened his mouth to speak, but isn’t it always best to be honest? The answer was no.
He was half way through another spirited chuckle when he felt it, the sudden rush of cold wetness that registered first on his face before quickly seeping through his uniform jacket.
“I think we’re about equal now, don’t you think?” Laura chirped up, sitting back down and letting the now empty glass rest on the table. And at that, Laura Roslin began giggling. Not just any giggle, but a distinctly self satisfied and uncontrollable giggle that she knew wouldn’t end easily.
"Oh you are going to pay for that Madam President!” He responded as he wiped the water from his eyes with the arm of his jacket.
She didn’t know what she had been expecting when the water left her glass and hit the Admiral squarely in the face but she had not expected that tone and the almost adolescent warning that followed, the one that told her to ‘get your ass out of that seat and start running because he’s going to get you for that!’
And with that, Laura Roslin, President and prophet, let out a small shriek and jumped from her place on the sofa in a mass of arms and legs just as the Admiral leapt forward and cleared the table in one move, landing in the place Laura Roslin had been occupying before making her dash for freedom. His mind briefly questioned what he might have done or said, had he actually landed atop the President, but he didn’t question it for long because he had one idea dominating his thoughts ‘catch the President!’ and he was the Admiral of a Battlestar, he was good at catching his enemies, enemies and Presidents, enemies and Presidents and Laura, Laura. Laura Roslin had dashed from where she sat and was now stood on the balls of her feet, swaying undecidedly from one side to another behind a chair which she kept between them as she tried to ascertain, which side he would launch at her from.
“Now Admiral…” Her voice took on a quality he was sure she usually reserved for pupils in her teaching days “This is not the way to behave when faced with this kind of situation, we should sit down and talk about it…” Her eyes sparkled and he had no intention of sitting down and discussing this, and she knew it. She had no intention of discussing it either, not when she saw that glint in his eye, the one she had only ever seen in passing before, like a flicker of light in an ocean of blue, not when that glint was so apparent and she had such a desire to encourage it.
For his part, the Admiral was quite content to chase the President around his quarters all day; he was also contented by the fact that she appeared to be rapidly recovering from the previous night.
And with that, the glint wavered. Like a light bulb in its dying moments, it flickered before finally disappearing into the darkness.
Laura watched it, the brief flicker before it was lost, drowned in a sea of blue that, as she stared into it, seemed so much deeper and darker than before.
“Bill…?”
Her voice was hushed, his eyes had parted from hers and he was looking down now. She hoped, even though she knew it was futile, that when he looked up that perhaps that spark would return. He didn’t look up. It made no difference, the spark was gone now, swept away in a tide of something she hadn’t seen coming. Something that had caused him to pause, caused him to think, something she knew was about to become an issue, whatever it was.
“I’m sorry Laura”
His apology didn’t make her feel any easier, in fact, as she moved out from behind the chair, still half expecting him to pounce on her in what would most likely be the worst case of tickling she had ever had to endure, she felt herself looking for clues as to the cause of his sudden change in mood. Perhaps it was a trick to lure her from her safety behind the chair?
“Bill, I was joking when I said we should sit down and talk about this…”
He flopped back into his seat and when she realised that he was not about to make any attempt to catch her, she returned to her seat as well, sitting down on the edge of the sofa, resting her folded hands on her knee in front of her and waiting for an explanation. All that was left of their previous merriment was the hint of a smile, now tinted with curiosity that traced her lips.
“I know…it’s just…I really do think we should talk about…well…things.”
The last remnants of her smile faded. She didn’t like the sound of that. Things. Things covered such a wide option of topics; from something to nothing it could mean anything. Thing was a distinctly unsettling word. She had a sudden desire to change the subject or…something.
“Bill” She laughed uneasily “That sounded a bit like you’re breaking up with me.” She teased, hoping the subtle flirting would bring him out of whatever had caught up with him but he had yet to look up at her “Don’t tell me, you’ve been meeting with another President behind my back?” She cocked her head to the side, waiting for him to reply with something equally suggestive, but he remained silent. Silence. She really didn’t want to go back to the silence.
“How do you do it, Laura?” He asked, finally, looking up as he spoke. She was taken aback by the seriousness of his expression, the darkness that had taken hold of his eyes. What was that? Sadness? Pity? Something else? She couldn’t put her finger on it but it was such a long and sudden fall from the playful nature that had taken hold of them both not so long ago.
“What do you mean?”
His eyes drifted away, lost in thought.
“How do you do it? I mean…after…” He didn’t want to say it, as if the name itself would crumble away the last shreds of ease they had left, so he didn’t say it, didn’t say that name, just looked at her once again, his eyes searching hers “How do you forget?” *the things that eat you up inside* he wanted to add, but he didn’t need to, she knew what he meant, she just didn’t want to answer.
“Bill…” She started; trying to think of some way to turn this conversation around, take it in a new direction, another direction, any direction but this one. She wasn’t ready for this.
“No” He said almost too forcefully, shaking his head, already realising how keenly she was trying to escape this conversation, but it had to happen, didn’t it? It had to happen eventually. Surely this was something that had been a long time coming, he hadn’t realised it until now but they’d avoided some subjects long enough, too long some might say.
“Laura…last night…”
As his eyes rose to meet hers again, she looked away.
“Bill…” Her voice was a warning, a gentle warning, ‘back off, I can’t’. But he couldn’t, he had to know and the only one that could tell him was sat there, on the cool leather sofa in front of him, still damp from the water now long forgotten.
“Laura, tell me about New Caprica”